J.B. Rhine

Joseph Banks Rhine (1895–1980) was an American botanist-turned-psychologist who, at Duke University, founded modern experimental parapsychology, coining the term “extrasensory perception” (ESP) and popularizing “parapsychology” itself.

Seeking to move psychic claims out of the séance room and into the laboratory, he ran large numbers of forced-choice card-guessing trials (Zener cards) to test telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition, and dice-throwing experiments to test psychokinesis (PK) — the supposed direct influence of mind on matter.

His 1934 monograph Extra-Sensory Perception and his statistical methods made the field look, for a time, like a rigorous experimental science. Rhine is a pivotal node in the science-adjacent layer of mind-power, especially for the PK research that bears directly on “mind over matter.” His above-chance results were widely publicized and remain foundational references for claims that intention can affect physical and informational systems.

FLAG: these claims are strongly contested. Critics identified methodological weaknesses (optional stopping, sensory leakage, inadequate randomization, selective reporting), and his striking early results did not reliably replicate; the effects, where present, are tiny and disputed.

He is essential context for understanding both the aspiration and the persistent empirical difficulties of “mind affects matter.”.